


Lies

by josephina_x



Series: Dimension 46’\-A [9]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: (...is ‘consensual brainwashing’ a tag?), (I feel like it should be a tag), (it’s Bill c’mon what do you expect here really), (meh), (oops), (well maybe it’s more like ‘borderline dubcon brainwashing’ though), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Brainwashing, Gen, Insanity, One Year Later, Post-Series, Post-Weirdmageddon, See You Next Summer, mental issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-13
Updated: 2018-06-13
Packaged: 2019-05-21 16:12:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14918627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/josephina_x/pseuds/josephina_x
Summary: Bill, getting more of his 'think' on.





	Lies

**Author's Note:**

> Fic: Lies  
> Fandom: Gravity Falls  
> Pairing: n/a  
> Rating: PG-13  
> Spoilers: through the end of the series, and some of the books (Journal #3)  
> Summary: Bill, getting more of his 'think' on.  
> Disclaimer: Not mine, not for profit.  
> AN: Hm. This was not where I originally thought this was going to go. (Wrote a bunch of stuff, then scrapped nearly all of it and rewrote it completely... just in case you’re wondering about part of the reason why it took so long for me to get this next piece out there.)  
>   
> \--Oh, well! It’s fine; it’s fine. *smiles*  
>   
>  _Author’s Note, 2018-Jul-29: This fic takes place late-night on Day 11 of Bill Cipher’s return. An entire afternoon and most of an evening has passed since the events of[Fr[i]en[ds and En]emies](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13566594), and Bill is tired and in pain and aching from everything that happened out on the porch, and then some. Bill isn’t happy about a bunch of things that it feels to Bill like Stan practically threw at him out of nowhere, and Bill’s angry that he hadn’t realized before now the implications of a lot of things Stan’s been talking to him about -- some of which Bill’s already agreed to. They’re both still holding to the basics of the agreement for now, but right now everything feels like it’s in flux, and a lot of arguments are on the horizon. Bill isn’t liking the thought that Stan probably isn’t going to want to make any changes to, or give Bill much leeway on, most of what Stan has already gotten; Bill isn’t all that sure that he’s going to be able to talk Stan around on anything all that easily, and what really doesn’t help is that Bill’s **mind hurts** right now. Bill falls asleep thinking that he’s probably going to try and heal himself the next day, like Stanley suggested, and..._

\---

Stanford smiled up at Bill.

“Then it’s a deal,” Stanford told him, arm and hand outstretched towards him. “From now until the end of time.”

Bill was impatient, and trying very hard not to show it. Freaking Six-fingered Stanford Pines, with all his overdramatic Stanford Pines-ness. “Just let me into your mind, Stanford.” ‘ _Let me be able to do what needs to be done, so I can finally get myself out of this broken, decaying dimension, and into YOURS!_ ’

And finally -- FINALLY -- Stanford reached out and shook his hand.

\--Then added the craziest addendum to their deal that Bill had ever encountered in his nearly one trillion years of continuous existence: “Please, call me… a friend.”

And for a moment, for Bill, it almost felt like time had stopped.

Bill felt the utter encroaching madness of an insanity _beyond_ insanity looming, starting to press down on him, because **what?!?** \-- _What had this Stanford Pines just said???_

Bill had a split-second -- less than that, even -- to decide. To go through with the deal, or not.

If he didn’t go through with it, he’d be left holding nothing -- _less than nothing_ \-- having to explain somehow, to this Stanford, _why_ being a friend to a human -- _much less a **Stanford**_ \-- wasn’t something he was willing to do.

But if he _did_ go through with it--

\--He didn’t really have a choice here, now, did he? Because this wasn’t just any Stanford Pines, this was the Stanford from the dimension where his Zodiac was. This Stanford Pines was _part_ of his Zodiac! Bill couldn’t say no. He couldn’t risk it. Not if he wanted to get out, to _escape_ \--

‘ _AHAHAHAHAHA!_ ’ a corner of his already-fracturing mind laughed out, as he kept and continued to keep his hold on Stanford’s-- Ford’s-- Six-finger’s hand. ‘ _AHAHAHAHA! --I can **work** with this!!_ ’

And as he shook ~~Ford’s-- Six-finger’s--~~ Sixer’s hand, half of Bill’s mind inverted abruptly, and the majority of his usual reactions to just about everything were pushed out to the very edges and boundaries of his energy flow in the process.

And there they stayed, to ~~twist and distort~~ merely loom over just about anything and everything that he tried to do -- ~~ON PURPOSE~~ \-- because a great deal of him was ~~vindictive about~~ looking forward to what this would be having him act like, having him try to do for this ~~simple stupid human~~ wonderful new friend, who wasn’t just a begrudging manipulated little pawn like all of the others. No no no ~~_no no NO **NO!!**_~~ \-- _this_ Stanford was _special_. Sixer was ~~better -- no, _worse_ \-- no~~ different from the others, and this had gone better than he ever could have possibly imagined--

‘ _\-- this would work -- this would work -- this would work ~~\-- this would have to work -- this had to work~~ \-- this would work ~~\-- this had BETTER work~~ \-- this would be BETTER than just working! --_ ’

The corners of Bill’s eye slowly turned upwards in a very happy smirk, and his eye got a bit of a starry-eyed shine.

‘ _Sixer_ ,’ Bill thought. ‘ _My friend. **MINE**._ ’

\---

Bill jerked bolt-upright in bed screaming, reaching for--

“ _\--no no NO **NO!!**_ ” Bill yelled out, because that wasn’t-- it couldn’t be--

Couldn’t be true. Couldn’t. Couldn’t-couldn’t-couldn’t. Nightmare. Had to be. Not true. Couldn’t be--

Across the room, Stanley let out a sleepy huff of breath and shifted in place, in his own bed. Bill heard the older Pines settle again, quietly, slowly; the sound of his breath evened out, soft and deep.

And reality crashed back down on Bill, his hands falling limply down into his lap. His head tilted back on his neck, eyes wide and staring. All two of them that he had available to him just then.

He had a human-ish body. Stanley Pines was in the same room as him. He was in a _room_ , in a house. --In the Shack. He was in Dimension 46’\\.

He was attached via an anchor on his back to said Stanley, and could really only feel it when he strained against it.

He couldn’t feel any strings attaching him to Si-- to _Ford_ , but then he hadn’t been able to feel them before either. Not while his body was _this_ human-ish. Not until...

\--But he _did_ feel an empty ache inside him now, where it felt like something should be.

One that was located right at the core-and-center of him.

…but that somehow also felt like it extended a faultline straight up into his head, inside his skull, inside his _mind_.

It was an ache so deep and tangled up inside-and-through the whole of him that it felt almost... painful.

‘-- _Sixer had just been **playing** , hadn’t he? it was a **game** ; Sixer didn’t mean it, couldn’t have meant it_ \--’

Bill shuddered, fell backwards in bed, and _choked_... as his mind spasmed, like a turtle stuck on its back, trying to flip itself over again.

And _this_ time…

‘-- _he’s a **Stanford** , isn’t he? Stanfords don’t **lie** to me; Stanfords don’t think I’m a muse, Stanfords don’t want to be my friend_ \--’

...it was able to do so.

Bill could hear Stanley Pines breathing, soft and slow, across the room from him. He was in Dimension 46’\\.

He wouldn’t be out of his own decaying dimension if he hadn’t made that deal with Stanford. Therefore, he’d made that deal with Stanford. And then…

‘-- _then_ \--’

...Stanford had taken it back. Called the deal off. Finally, and with finality, almost three-and-a-half decades later.

Bill raised the palm of his hand to his forehead and pressed it inwards, downwards with gravity, stifling a groan, because…

‘-- _it was true. All of it. All of it was true. All of it happened._ \--’

...it hadn’t been something he’d somehow conjured up all-and-only inside his own mind, and no-one else’s. -- _It had happened._ It had _actually_ happened. **He had done that.**

And now…

‘-- _All of it was true, even the parts where he was false with me._ \--’

...he was having trouble deciding whether it was having _lost_ his deal with Stanford that he wanted to not be true, or whether it was having _made_ that deal with him in the first place.

His head hurt so badly, he literally _couldn’t decide_ just then.

A crackle of thunder rumbled through the closed window, through the panes of glass and the set of curtains drawn across it, precursor to a summer storm. As the thunder’s echo slowly faded away, the sounds of rain slowly began to filter in.

Bill closed his eyes where he lay and shivered.

His mind was an utter **mess** just then, and he knew it.

He pulled in a breath. Let it out again. Listened to the rain for awhile.

Slowly let his insane mind, his cracked mentality, work its way over the problem.

And as he crawled his way through the broken-glass shards of logic he did have available to him at that moment in time, he reasoned that when it came right down to it, when all was said and done...

… _objectively_ , having made that deal with this Stanford **had** enabled him to do what he’d needed to do, in order to be able to and capable of getting himself out of his old decaying dimension. So ultimately, that made it worth it.

It had been worth it, because now he was out.

All else could be fixed and moved past, now that he was out.

Because he was out.

...Ugh, his head _hurt_ so _badly_ , though. Why was that?

Bill slowly slitted open his eyes and stared up at the ceiling.

A low rumble of thunder thrummed out like a struck chord, mixing with the sounds of the rainfall.

Bill muttered to himself and rolled over in bed, into a different position, trying to cushion his head with his arms -- as if that would help any.

...because was the cause of his headache more from the remembrance he’d just woken himself from, the loss of the deal strings that had been attaching him to Stanford, or all the physical knocks it had taken lately? Or all three?

Oh, who was he kidding -- it was probably all three! Curse the Axolotl. The latter two were enough of an annoyance all on their own, but adding in that third one to the mix?

‘ _...What a **wonderful** time for me to have finally begun to regenerate part of my own personal ‘Dreamscape’ again, on top of everything else,_ ’ Bill thought to himself sarcastically, rubbing the side of his right hand back and forth against his right temple. Then he winced slightly and immediately stopped doing that, when he realized that was just making the growing ache in his head feel even worse.

He dropped his hand back down to the pillow and grimaced. Ever since he’d woken up in this stupid human-ish body, whenever he’d fallen asleep -- _except_ for what had happened just then -- he had experienced nothing short of a full-stop that might as well have been death while “asleep.” Not a pleasant experience, or non-experience, in Bill’s opinion.

Bill had theorized to himself, once he’d started to feel a little better on the afternoon of the fourth day of his not-quite-incarceration in ‘his’ (Stanley’s) room at the Shack, that his lack of a personal ‘Dreamscape’ was the most likely cause of the feeling he’d had of no-time-passage in-between sleeping and waking; and, from what had just happened to him now, he had a feeling that he hadn’t been wrong about that.

Bill had had no idea how long it might take for his personal ‘Dreamscape’ to begin to reform itself out of the tatters it had been in when he’d last shredded it, so he supposed that that was one question answered, at least. Not knowing enough about his human-ish body to begin with, he’d been unable to make much of a guess as to the _when_ , only a guess as to the _what_. Clearly, the _when_ for this body was something on the order of not-quite-twelve days.

Bill rocked his head back and forth on his pillow slightly, grimacing, because _not_ touching his head in that position didn’t make it feel any better, either. So Bill let out a tired sigh and shifted in place again, closing his eyes and rolling over further to try lying face-down on his pillow, to see if that made things any better. And then he got back to his thinking.

\--Stanley, for his part, had exhibited nothing but confusion at first, when confronted with Bill’s overreaction upon waking, the morning of Bill’s second day at the Shack. Bill had lay down in bed at Stanley’s request that first night, expecting absolutely nothing to happen other than to spend the rest of the night staring at the ceiling and thinking through _how he could convince Stanley Pines that he was, in fact, Bill Cipher_ , and... well.

He’d lay down in bed, he’d gotten under the covers like Stanley had not-so-politely asked him to, he’d blinked… and then he’d opened his eyes to a bunch of light streaming in the window and a very different sort of headache than he’d been feeling the night before.

The sheer and outright **panic** Bill had felt at the time had been both embarrassing and, in retrospect, utterly stupid. He’d been knocked unconscious earlier the previous day, and had even fallen asleep and woken up in that very same bed again the day before, too; he should have realized what was going on sooner, and remembered where he was and what state he was in upon waking immediately. But he hadn’t. ...To be perfectly honest with himself, he _still_ had trouble with it.

At the time, that second morning, Stanley had merely frowned at Bill’s reaction and told Bill that his ongoing mental confusion was probably because of the hit (or two?) to the head that Bill had received the day prior, offering up the idea that ‘maybe you might have some sorta mild concussion, kid’ as an explanation for his unusual behavior. Bill had let Stanley do so -- let ‘a concussion’ take the blame at the time -- because it had been convenient to let Stanley think that he was incapacitated in such a way.

It had been convenient, because it had caused Stanley to underestimate him. It had had the end result of Stanley leaving him alone in the room, to lie in bed for most of the morning all on his own -- thinking without interruption, rather than under Stanley’s constant and potentially highly-suspicious supervision -- but… Bill knew that he’d really had no excuse.

He’d had even less of an excuse trying to take Stanley on in a reasonably-fair fight later that morning, trying to show off his magic and make the old man both realize and admit that he was, in fact, Bill Cipher. The resentment he’d felt the day before -- at being talked to and treated like he was a kid -- hadn’t gone away, and the embarrassment he’d felt at how he’d reacted upon waking that morning -- and the fact that Stanley had seen him do so -- had together combined to push him over the edge. The thoroughly-insulting lack of respect and fear had been intolerable. He’d _needed_ Stanley to believe that he was who he said he was, to believe that he was one to be feared again-and-still, because anything _less_ than that had been unthinkable to Bill at that point. He’d _needed_ to get some of his own back. And then… then… _well_. It hadn’t gone _well_ , exactly...

...but he hadn’t been killed or eaten as a result of his loss and subsequent defeat, either. --Or killed _and_ eaten. He hadn’t even really suffered any injury or other physical punishment from the attempt! Just a temporary fatigue that he’d recovered from quickly, within the hour. The whole experience had been nothing more than a minor setback -- one that had also ended up being highly informative, in the long view of things. So...

Bill sighed at himself in annoyance. If he’d had any sense at all, at the time, that morning of the second day…

Once he’d realized that he wasn’t trapped inside the barrier, he _should_ have run off, _right then_ \-- not _stuck around_! Certainly not _waited_ right outside the barrier, facing the door to the back porch, to stand there grinning and loudly verbally declare his intent to Stanley Pines once he came walking out said door of the house, well before Stanley had even thought to join him outside of the barrier.

He _definitely_ shouldn’t have let Stanley talk him down from ‘outright destroying him immediately’ to more of a ‘demonstration of his power’ instead, despite the fact that Stanley had certainly been right when he’d pointed out that being destroyed immediately would not leave him alive long enough for him to properly appreciate Bill’s overwhelming and fearsomely magical, creatively weird self. (...’assuming that he was Bill in the first place’ -- because it wasn’t as though Stanley had admitted that that was who he was, yet-and-still.)

He _absolutely_ should _not_ have let himself get all excited about things as he had gone about explaining to Stanley exactly what he was going to do to him, once he’d finally stepped outside the barrier with Bill. --He _shouldn’t_ have gone about _explaining_ anything to Stanley at all, in an excited bid to show Stanley _exactly_ what he could do.

Bill raised a hand to his right temple, rubbing it again, and stifled a groan, because in retrospect? Demonstrating and explaining things to Stanley had been far from the only things he should not have done. Doing those two things had been bad enough. Worse than that was that he _definitely_ shouldn’t have done so while _turning his back on the human_ to draw things on the ground -- both losing sight of the human and, at times, actually forgetting Stanley was even there as he'd tried to concentrate more fully on certain aspects of the magic he’d been attempting to perform!

But he’d let Stanley talk him into a _demonstration_ , instead of an immediate-destruction of his person in an overwhelming display of his own power. --And a proper demonstration required an explanation for there to be a full appreciation of what was being done, after all, didn’t it? HAHA! ...It _had_ been stupid of him, though, _especially_ when he’d gone from trying to show off things like the magical equivalent of weirdness bubbles, being told no, trying to do it anyway, getting angry at Stanley stopping him, and then…

Bill let out a huff of breath and dropped his hand back down to the pillow at the side of his head again.

After the fifth time of getting interrupted that way by Stanley and finally getting fed up with the old man’s antics, he’d both decided and pronounced on the spot that he was ‘going to turn Stanley’s head into a swarm of bees now’ for the offense... and he really should’ve moved from thinking of it as a potentially-devastating ‘demonstration’ to an ‘actual knock-down-drag-out fight’ at that point himself -- _not_ waited until _Stanley_ had started talking trash about what would-and-wouldn’t-work in actual knock-down-drag-out fights.

In retrospect, Bill was realizing, in thinking about it all over again now (and he’d done a _lot_ of that in the days since then, thinking and rethinking and re-rethinking everything that had and hadn’t happened during that fight…), there was no reason for Stanley to have _ever_ waited until nearly the very end of Bill’s circle-drawing to start scuffing anything out. Stanley _had_ begun to do so earlier and earlier in Bill’s attempted ‘demonstration’s as Bill tried to speed things up, yes, but that had been _later on in_. Infuriatingly enough -- though Bill hadn’t quite realized it at the time ( _and why hadn’t he?!?!?_ ) -- Stanley had been **going easy** on him ( _and why had he!?!?!_ ).

Bill didn’t like the idea of it at all, but it was true. Bill knew this by simple logic, because Stanley _could_ have done far worse to Bill at the beginning. From the very beginning. He _could_ have physically attacked him with tickles and tackles from the start!

...Or worse. He could have done to Bill what Stanford had done that afternoon-prior, now that Bill had that specific and explicit example of alternate human reaction-and-response to compare it to and think about. --And why _hadn’t_ Stanley grabbed him and punched and kicked him outright in an actual attack? It would have violated that protective ‘kid stuff’, sure, but Stanley still could have done it. There had been absolutely nothing stopping him. And Bill _had_ been trying to hurt Stanley, long before the end of things, long before he’d collapsed due to body-fatigue and been no longer able to continue, in the end leaving Stanley winning by default.

Actually, maybe Stanley attacking him at that point wouldn’t have violated that ‘kid stuff’ after all. Stanley had only said that he’d protect Bill if Bill didn’t start a fight with whoever-else, and Bill had been fighting with him. Stanley was a ‘whoever-else’. So, by that logic… hadn’t Bill violated all that ‘kid stuff’ from his end? Shouldn’t Stanley have felt justified in attacking him outright? _So why hadn’t he?_

...Or had Stanley just considered all of it part of the ‘schooling-learning stuff’ that went with being ‘a kid’ instead? In retrospect, almost everything Stanley had said during that whole fiasco had been both informative and correct. And Bill had most certainly been a bit out of it by the time they’d hit the end of the ‘match’, but he still half-remembered Stanley having said something about a ‘teaching moment’, before he’d picked Bill back up and literally carried him back inside, to dump his exhausted physical form back onto his bed and tell him to rest up for awhile. And then when they’d talked later that night, and Stanley had proposed a mutual nonaggression agreement on top of all the ‘kid stuff’...

Well. It had seemed like a good idea at the time, anyway. Especially after _all that_.

...So maybe Stanley _had_ been right in his initial assessment of Bill having been suffering from a mild concussion, now that Bill thought about it, if that really was the sort of behavior that it caused. Because looking back on his behavior, and all of his mistakes... Bill realized that he really _hadn’t_ been thinking clearly -- not at all. He never should’ve taken Stanley Pines at his word -- Bill knew better! He knew better than to do that with _anyone_. And yet…

And yet.

Stanley hadn’t exactly promised that he wouldn’t lie to him, or even that he’d tell him the truth -- all he’d said was that he’d try to answer Bill’s questions to the best of his ability when they were alone together. _But_. With all the experience of his trillion years informing him, in Bill’s vaunted opinion… Stanley was trying. He hadn’t been lying. Bill knew full well the difference between someone lying to him, and the information being given to him being incorrect -- he took that into account all the time -- and _Stanley hadn’t been lying_.

It was completely and utterly insane.

It was completely and utterly insane in a very different way than Bill was insane, of course, but it was still _completely and utterly insane_ \-- Stanley had been trying to do what he’d said he would do, to the best of his ability. Stanley had actually _meant what he’d said_ \-- **all** that he’d said -- when all that ‘kid stuff’ had come up, and again for everything that went along with their mutual nonaggression agreement, and everything else in-between.

Stanley hadn’t been lying to him, and Stanley had been trying to ‘look out for him’ like he thought ‘a kid’ should be looked out for, adult to child. Stanley had meant what he’d said about everything that he’d said.

Including what he’d said about Bill having a concussion.

Including what he’d said about Stanford not being his friend.

Another peal of thunder rang out, cutting through the sounds of rainfall, and Bill snarled out in wordless frustration as he rolled over onto his back again and slitted open his eyes, staring sightlessly up at a ceiling he couldn’t see in the dark.

His head ached. His head _still_ ached. It wasn’t getting any better, and what Stanford had done had made things even _worse_. Stanford Pines and his stupid, dumb, stupidly-stupid idiotic lying ways.

The way Bill saw it, Stanford had been lying. The only thing Bill wasn’t entirely sure about... was the _when_.

Either Stanford had been lying about being his friend right from the start, like he’d said out on the porch, or Stanford _had_ been his friend and Stanford was lying _now_.

(…Or, _or_ , there was that third option. And that third option was one that Bill liked even less than the others. Option three was this: that Stanford had actually _thought_ that he was Bill's friend, way back when, but the self-delusion had been so great that Stanford had never ever realized that he was lying to himself. And if Stanford himself hadn’t realized it, WELL THEN, how could Bill have known, until…?)

\--Stanford had never been Bill’s friend. That was an objective _fact_. Maybe Stanford had lied to himself and _thought_ he’d been Bill friend, or maybe he hadn’t thought that at all and had just been conning Bill the entire time that he’d known him, but Stanford definitely _hadn’t_ been Bill’s friend, at all, **ever**. Bill knew how friends were supposed to act, demon or human or otherwise, and Stanford? HA! -- _Stanford had **never** acted like a friend to him._

If Stanford had ever been his friend, he never would have taken Glasses’ words at face-value and angrily declared that he was going to stop Bill from entering his dimension.

Glasses hadn’t been Stanford’s friend. Bill had SEEN how Stanford had treated Glasses, had seen what Stanford thought (and _didn’t_ think) of Glasses _inside his own head_. And this Stanford? Didn’t think of Glasses that way at all. _\--None of them did._

But when Glasses -- _**not** a friend of Stanford’s_ \-- had told Stanford that Bill -- _who was **supposedly** a ‘friend’ of Stanford’s_ \-- that the portal machine was dangerous ( _well, of course it was!_ ) and that Stanford could bring about the end of the world with it ( _well, of course he could!_ ), and that Bill himself was a beast to be feared ( _ **rude** much, Glasses?_ ) -- _WELL, WELL, WELL_ \-- _what_ had Stanford Pines done then?

Stanford Pines had believed Glasses over the ‘muse’ whom he’d proclaimed to be his friend.

Stanford Pines had gone into the Dreamscape, confronted Bill -- yes, _confronted_ was _exactly_ the right word for it, he **hadn’t** been _seeking_ or _looking for_ or _hoping to find_ him... -- and when he’d found him, he’d barely asked any questions of Bill at all. --Really, he’d asked _no_ questions of Bill, when it came right down to it. He’d merely _demanded_ and _stated_ and _exclaimed_ rather than asked things of him, opinions fully-formed already well-prior to his entry, and their encounter.

Stanford had barely ‘asked’ _where_ the portal “really” led -- as if he’d ever cared to know the specifics of that before! He hadn’t even asked about the _what_ or _who_ \-- Bill had told him that directly, thinking that ‘his friend Sixer’ might be interested to know -- _a party in his own dimension_ and _himself and all the demons and nightmares he liked to call his friends_ \-- but Stanford had certainly never asked it, before or since.

And Stanford Pines had never asked why.

He hadn’t cared.

And that was what it really came down to, at the end of it all: Bill had wanted something, and this Stanford Pines -- _just like all the rest of them_ \-- had said ‘no’.

He wasn’t Bill’s friend. He hadn’t even bothered himself to care enough to ask _why_ Bill had wanted it.

He’d just said no, he was going to stop him, and that was that.

Stanford Pines hadn’t liked what he had heard, hadn’t liked what Bill had told him he wanted, and Stanford Pines had decided that they were no longer friends.

Stanford Pines hadn’t liked something, and that was that. That was all it took. --What a ‘ _friend_ ’, right? What a real _pal_ he was!

He hadn’t even had the decency to call off their deal after doing so, even after Bill had reminded him of it.

_’A deal’s a deal, Sixer!’_

He hadn’t even had the decency to _call off their deal_.

\--Until now. _FINALLY_. After _Stanley Pines_ and _Pine Tree_ all-but- **forced** and TRICKED him into doing it!

...Honestly, Bill owed Pine Tree one for that, and Bill knew it. --Bill hated _hated_ HATED to admit that to ANYONE, let alone himself -- _and he’d NEVER, **EVER** do so outside of his own mind, let alone to the kid’s face!_ \-- but it was true. The kid had really come through for him, there!

(Stanford hadn’t just asked Bill to call him a friend. He’d asked Bill to ‘please, call him a friend’. He hadn’t wanted Bill to call him a friend -- he’d wanted Bill to _want_ to call him a friend.)

(Bill realized now, for the first time since that almost immediately-suppressed flash of understanding he'd had when shaking Ford's hand, that he hadn’t even been capable of properly thinking about how completely one-sided it all had been while the deal had been on. Because if he had been able to think about it, then he wouldn’t have wanted to be Stanford’s friend -- because why would he want to be friends with a human? Let alone someone who did not and would not return the gesture -- let alone the sentiment -- of friendship, in anything remotely the same way as he? Let alone someone who disrespected him by proclaiming TO HIS FACE that he thought Bill was stupid. Let alone someone who consistently, on the regular, was _actively trying to kill him_.)

The kid had really come through for him, in getting him out of that very bad deal, yes. And it had been so bad that Bill himself felt like he owed the kid one for it. But. Bill Cipher _did not do things for free_. He was a ‘dream demon’ who did deals, not a so-called ‘saint’ like Jheselbraum giving out handouts on the regular.

Bill didn’t do _anything_ for free. There were _always_ strings attached. Even if it seemed like there weren’t. -- _Especially_ then.

It was part of what made him so leery about what Stanley was trying to do for him with all this ‘kid stuff’, and now what Pine Tree had just pulled off for him on top of that. Nothing was for free; there were _always_ strings attached.

\--But Bill was having trouble figuring out what the strings were for all these things. There had to be a catch. There _had_ to be at least one, if not several.

But for the life of him, Bill could not find them. He could not figure out what they were.

And the uncertainty was slowly driving him even more insane.

...Worse, what Pine Tree had done had been well-beyond the bounds of the agreement they all had currently in-place. Bill was far, far older than the kid, both by Stanley’s reckoning and his own; and as part of the agreement, so long as it held, he was required to look out for the kid, but in no way was Pine Tree required -- let alone expected -- to do the same for him. And Pine Tree hadn’t just been looking out for him, he’d _actively HELPED_ him.

Stanley had even done Bill another ‘good turn’ by reframing the kid’s help as pulling one over on _him_ , Bill Cipher, rather than as having pulled one over on _Stanford_. That had to be racking up the deficit Bill had going with Stanley even more deeply on Bill’s side of things.

Bill let out a long, slow, disgruntled breath. Karma. was SO STUPID. argh.

He squirmed in bed, hating the very thought. -- _Handouts._ Ugh. Getting himself things through trickery and deals was one thing, but this was… just...

Bill had no idea how to make it up to the kid, either, to help try to balance it out for his own sake and safety. ...Maybe continue to answer the kid’s questions as if their deal was still on? The kid had seemed pretty mad at having lost that, so obviously that was something that the kid considered to be of enough value that Pine Tree would want it back, and appreciate having it back. But for how long should Bill do that? Would doing that until the kid tried to use that knowledge against him be enough? --That would be a pretty horrible idea, though, just handing the kid whatever weaponized knowledge he wanted, like that. If he gave Pine Tree information that could be used against him… Stanford was one thing, but Pine Tree was another.

Stanford was a walking disaster area. Pine Tree was actually _dangerous_.

He could split the difference, maybe. But he’d have to give the kid more than just worthless baubles of facts for it to ‘count’ as a karma-hit in the right direction, though. --And it might actually have to be something really substantial. With the agreement in place, if it was just “normal help,” of the kind that Bill was supposed to and expected to give, well, then that would just be part of the mutually agreed-upon behaviors that he and Stanley and the rest had already agreed to -- no rebalancing there! And Pine Tree might actually need some small tokens of knowledge to be given to him from time to time, in order to both help keep Pine Tree alive and also to help keep the kid from feeling severe mental distress, for Bill to keep to the agreement. Shooting Star, by comparison, seemed to only get that way when family members were being physically or mentally attacked; Pine Tree, on the other hand, was delightfully easy to panic, especially when the kid was thrust into a situation without enough knowledge or a plan at the ready.

Sharing information that actually mattered with Pine Tree, though... That meant taking on some actual _risk_ by giving the kid some things that could actually make Bill’s life more difficult -- well, depending on what Pine Tree did with the information, anyway. And it wasn’t like the kid hadn’t already proven to Bill that he could be very difficult when he wanted to be.

\--Seriously though, the way the kid panicked when he was outmaneuvered and outgunned was freakin’ HILARIOUS. And it would be oh-so-easy to only give the kid _juuuuuust_ enough information to get himself into just the sort of trouble that he just couldn’t get out of on his own, to watch him squirm and fight and scream for help that never came. To watch him BREAK when his own actions HURT his 'grunkle’, KILLED his sister, LOST him his great-uncle, and DESTROYED his own life as he knew it! It would be so _delicious_ to watch, and so fun to set up and let loose. And it wasn’t like Bill couldn’t pull it off, either -- he could. _Easily_. --He **really** wanted to play with the kid a lot more, so very badly! But...

Bill let out another disgruntled breath and shook his head side to side in disgust. Things were so, so risky right now, he had to hedge his bets. Breaking the agreement with Stanley, cutting and running just wasn’t a option anymore.

He should have done it while he’d still had the chance. ...If he’d actually ever _had_ the chance.

Bill made a face at the dark ceiling above him that he couldn’t see. Because Pine Tree was one thing, and Shooting Star another. Balancing and interacting with them was difficult enough, but not impossible. Stanford was completely ignorable by comparison, as were Question Mark and ‘Melody’ and Red.

But then there was _Stanley_.

Bill _very much_ doubted that trying to stay within the bounds of their agreement would be enough to balance things out with Stanley, even slightly, because the agreement itself was _already_ too balanced. The thing was a terrible headache for him, on top of everything else, sure, but… he was getting too much benefit out of following it himself for that to make a dent on his karmic side of the scale. That was even _with_ the ‘extra leeway’ he’d been going along with with Stanley on the ‘accidents’ and everything else, and even if he extended himself unnecessarily to include Stanley himself under the same umbrella of benefits-strictures-and-guidelines. And that was because the reasoning he’d given to Stanley that he’d used to justify doing so was far too close to being true.

And the rest of it all fit together far too seamlessly for any part of it to so easily be classified by Bill as an unnecessary and overburdening addition, any of which might balance the scales back in his direction. No no no, that would be too EASY for Stanley to let him get away with, wouldn’t it? Instead, each and every part of the agreement was all working together too-much and too-well with each other, in balance and counter-balance and counter-counter-balance and counter-counter-counter---

Bill really, _really_ wanted to BREAK it now, just for that reason alone!

\--But it was too blasted _useful_ for Bill to be the one to break it. With both Shooting Star and Stanley _not_ outright trying to attack him because of it, the agreement was almost worth it just for that alone. With Pine Tree actively helping him as part of it all _on top of that_ …

Ugh. This was one giant mess. This was one giant mess, and Bill HATED KARMA!!!

He wouldn’t be so worried about it -- _not that he was WORRIED about it, WORRIED was the wrong word for it, HA!_ \-- if he was entirely sure about the specifics of his death.

\--The specifics, that is, not the generalities -- not _that_ he’d died, not _if_ he’d died, not _whether-or-not_ he’d died -- Bill _knew_ that he HAD died, that was for certain. No. What he was unsure about was what had happened to him _after_ he’d died.

What he didn’t know was _how_ , exactly, he’d come back. Not the specifics of it.

And it mattered. It mattered A LOT.

A long, long time ago, the Axolotl had given him a prophecy. --A prophecy about him! It had actually been a bit long, as prophecies go -- then again, for a being with a trillion-year-long lifespan (and counting!), maybe it was actually pretty short. Though the last little bit of it was the part that Bill cared about the most at the moment, since the rest of it had already happened.

He closed his eyes and drew in a slow breath as he remembered what that big stupid frilly lizard had told him...

_**When it comes your time to burn,**_

_**Know that you, Bill, can return.**_

_**But if you want to shirk the blame,**_

_**You’ll have to invoke my name.**_

_**You will have all you desire,**_

_**Once I’ve plucked you from the fire:**_

_**Home and help, Partners in crime,**_

_**A different form, a different time.**_

...and let his breath out again in a rush, shivering slightly at what he recalled.

Bill blinked open his eyes to dispel the memory of the wide-wide smile the pink frilly lizard had given him as he’d shared it. --Even if he hadn’t kicked off the covers sometime before he’d woken up again, Bill would have felt cold after that.

He’d used to laugh about it. The idea of dying. How he’d had the Axolotl’s personal guarantee that when he died he’d come right back again, scot-free even! It was a big deal -- especially for him. Because Bill being Bill meant that Bill’s ‘reincarnation cycle’ was a bit more… _complicated_ \-- _yeah, let’s go with that, **more complicated**_ \-- than some other demons’ back-from-the-dead-again schtick might usually go.

Well. Bill had to admit, he wasn’t laughing now.

Bill had invoked the Axolotl’s name when he’d been falling apart inside Stanley’s burning mind, sure. Problem was, he wasn’t exactly sure if the Axolotl had been the one to bring him back.

Bill didn’t remember being grabbed, or ‘plucked’, or anything like that.

Bill was _sure_ that he’d remember meeting the Axolotl again. But he didn’t. He couldn’t.

He remembered going into Stanford’s mind -- except it not being Stanford at all. He remembered opening the door and realizing that it was Stanley instead. He remembered the trap’s door slamming shut on him at Stanley’s whim, and he remembered his powers not working and not believing it, not at first. He remembered when the flames began to rise. He remembered beginning to worry, then to panic, then trying to bargain with Stanley, and Stanley telling him ‘no’.

He remembered beginning to fall apart, trying to reform, still trying desperately to escape even as he called on the Axolotl to help him, having to accept that maybe this was it, maybe _this_ time was his time to burn. He remembered barely managing to pull a semblance of himself together again, remembered reaching towards Stanley in anger, remembered getting PUNCHED and _SCREAMING IN PAIN_ as he disintegrated into pieces and--

\--then he remembered waking up on the front porch of the Shack, flinching away from Stanley, growing more and more angry as he realized he was trapped in a stupid human-ish form, getting tricked again by Stanley -- this time to come inside the 'actual' _physical_ Shack.

He should remember the Axolotl plucking him up and out. He should remember talking to the big stupid lizard. But... neither of those things had happened. He had died, but that hadn’t happened.

And that probably meant that he’d gotten reincarnated with a karmic load that was determined by his trillion years of time as a full-on ‘triangle demon’ in his last life, prior to his death. A _full_ karmic load, retribution on-the-way in your next life while-you-wait! It had probably all carried over.

Prophecies were tricky things. It was all in the wording. Bill had invoked the Axolotl’s name, but that didn’t meant that the blame was shirked _yet_. ‘Shirking the blame’ was one of the things Bill wanted, but the Axolotl had only guaranteed ‘all that he desired’ _after_ he’d been plucked by the fire by the stupid pink lizard. And that HADN’T HAPPENED.

The fact that Bill wasn’t back in his old newly-restored dimension once again -- _of course the Axolotl could do that, it could rollback time completely whenever and wherever it wanted!_ \-- and the fact that he didn’t have anything close to ultimate power at his disposal -- _which the Axolotl could have granted him EASILY if it had really wanted to help him!_ \-- was bad enough. Coupled with the fact that his Henchmaniacs were nowhere to be found -- _likely still scattered Bill-didn’t-know-where without his All-Seeing Eye across who-knew-how-many dimensions Bill might never have even seen before, rather than being here in this dimension with him_ \-- made it pretty obviously clear to Bill that he hadn’t gotten ANYTHING that he’d desired. Therefore, the Axolotl couldn’t have been the one handling his revival. QED.

Near as he could tell from Ford’s ravings on the subject -- on the morning of that first day of the rest of his shiny new life, when they’d all been out on the porch together -- and from some of Stanley’s odd comments here-and-there on it later... it sounded like the most likely of unlikelies had been the ones to bring Bill back from the dead: a bunch of two-bit, dead-beat cultists.

Bill figured that whatever the cultists had done to him to ‘bring him back’ must have been the psychic spiritual equivalent of a stupid human physically getting emergency CPR after having flatlined for around a minute or so, being revived before too much brain damage set in and their soul left their body to rot. ...Except that Bill had been effectively shattered into a million pieces, so it was more like coming back from the dead again after a bunch of emergency field surgery after being torn apart by piranhas -- only not anything like that either, because humans were stupid and couldn’t do that yet.

It was kind of pathetic, in Bill’s opinion -- what kind of supposedly-intelligent species that hadn’t evolved past the need for a physical body _didn’t know how_ to un-kill itself after one of its members had been torn apart by a school of dumb fish with really sharp teeth?! --Humans, apparently.

And not only were members of _this_ species apparently the ones that had brought him back, but the specific individuals who had done so were almost definitely of the type that had been left scraping the bottom of the barrel when it had finally been their turn in line for the IQ points. --Seriously, cultists were the morons too stupid to do anything but shuffle in place at the very end of the line when they were handing out the last dregs of intelligence that were left, _if any_ , after everyone else got theirs, and there was a _reason_ that Bill usually just ignored the hell out of them most of the time. That was, in fact, THE reason. Period. Endstop. Time-to-pack-up-and-leave of the 'Back-the-train-up-'cause-we're-done-here' variety. Bill liked to think that he had standards, when it came to smarts in the folks he generally liked to deal with, if only for the fact that not only were stupid humans generally too stupid to do anything useful for him, they also generally weren't even that fun to mess with, since they didn't have the brains to properly understand or appreciate what Bill did and did not do to and for them. --And these complete and utter morons were supposed to be the ones who had brought him back?

So yes, that was a bit concerning to Bill. Because cultists? _Seriously?_ Bill had to fight down a full-body shudder, because those losers couldn’t find their heads with a map, let alone their minds! Bill literally did not want to think about how badly they must have botched the job in bringing him back. Knowing them, this stupid anchor thing he had going on with Stanley was probably the LEAST of it.

But you know what was even more concerning to Bill? --The fact that all this lunacy meant that he hadn’t actually gotten to ‘shirk the blame’ and lose all the bad karma from his previous life, like he’d been both expecting to do and had been counting on!

' _\--Stupid freaking cultists!_ '

Bill didn’t know the _when_ or _how_ of it without his All-Seeing Eye to help him see it coming -- not yet -- but he did know that he was _going_ to get hit by a metric ton of bad karma from his previous life very very soon, and the _least_ he could do was to at least TRY not to make it any worse on himself.

Unfortunately for him, getting given good and helpful things by Stanley when Bill should have nothing but bad things coming his way for the foreseeable future in this life wasn’t just an addition onto his karmic debt -- it was more like a _multiplicative_ factor. In a bad way.

What this meant was that he it was absolutely ESSENTIAL for him to keep his karma properly balanced for the interim on _everything else_ \-- at the very least until he could gather enough knowledge and power to game the system, tilt things in his favor to completely upset the ‘natural order of things’, and give himself the equivalent of karmic immunity, all before it was too late.

...Honestly, he should have realized there was a problem when he hadn’t woken up to realize that he’d been ostensibly reincarnated as a bug. Or a rock. Or a single-celled microorganism. Or any number of other things that were well down the reincarnation scale. Because waking up in a human-ish body? Really should've been the biggest of big honking clues that something had gone HORRIBLY wrong. Because getting reincarnated as a human was just about the worst of the worst! Humans really _really_ got the shortest-of-short-ends of the stick. All the stress of trying to keep every last one of those stupid and arbitrary human social conventions straight, and all of those stupid ‘rules of law’. Having a mortal physical body. The whole stupid digestive system thing, needing to eat food to survive. Having internal organs to begin with. All that hair. --Bill _really_ should’ve questioned it all much sooner.

But instead, he’d gotten sidetracked by Stanley. And then Stanford. --But mostly Stanley.

... _Maybe_ the anchor all down his back might be having some mitigating effect on the whole mess of a situation he was in, of having Stanley giving him so many things. Because it would make a _lot_ more sense -- _**and** balance everything out_ \-- if all this ‘kid stuff’ Stanley was giving him was in return for... for...

For _Bill wasn’t even **sure** what_.

\--Not _yet_ , anyway. Bill still wasn’t entirely sure exactly what the stupid anchor-thing _was_ , blast it!

Bill raised his hands to his forehead and kicked out at the mattress beneath him in restless frustration as the ache in his head threatened to turn into a dull throbbing. He HATED not KNOWING things! And the ache in his head wasn’t helping!

“‘Don’t _think_ too hard, Bill, you’ll just make things worse,’” he muttered well under his breath to himself, in a mockery of Stanley’s tones and words made in regards to his supposed physical-body concussion. Because _what was he supposed to do_ , then? **NOT** think?! HA! _\--He spent too much time sleeping as it was!!_

Bill rolled over onto his side on the bed again and punched the mattress, because...

Ugh, he couldn’t _TAKE THIS ANYMORE!!!_ \--He couldn’t get comfortable lying down, even on a ‘good’ day -- _floating was **so much better** , gravity was just **stupid!!**_ \-- and _nothing_ he did was making his head feel any better -- _surprise, surprise_ \-- and _everything_ he did was threatening to make his head feel even worse!

His head _ached_ , and it wasn’t getting any better -- not just then. And maybe not for a horribly-longer-than-he-was-capable-of-patiently-waiting-for unspecified amount of time, until his stupid human-ish body fixed itself in a stupid way, now. Because his stupid human-ish body was probably-actually-maybe capable of being -- and was definitely-almost-certainly _now_ after what had happened with Stanford out on the porch -- concussed. Rgh.

...Did it really MATTER that his head hurt, though? That would _have_ to stop, sooner or later. Bill sat up in bed, feeling determined to not let this get to him, this stupid problem with his physicality. Because, so what if his head ached and so did all his insides? It wasn’t like something THAT trivial could stop him from enjoying being _out_ , FINALLY, _**ONCE AND FOR ALL!**_

Bill listened to the rain for a long moment, then pulled in a full breath and let it out.

Because _**he was out**_. Maybe he was stuck in a stupid physical human-ish body that just wasn’t working right at-present, and maybe there was a horrible empty ache inside him where his deal with Stanford had been, but the facts of the matter remained: he didn’t have _any_ deals tying him to any _one_ or any _thing_ anymore, and he was out. **HE WAS OUT.**

He was out, and there was _actual weather_ going on outside. And he wanted to see it! --No, not just see it, and Bill pulled in another quick and heady breath as he thought the thought -- he wanted to _experience_ it. He wanted to _breath in_ the wet, watch the lightning flash and... and...

...he couldn’t do that in the room with Stanley. He glanced across the dark room, in the direction of the prone and presumably-sleeping form of Stanley Pines, and...

Bill knew that if got up and opened the curtains in front of the window, then opened the window itself, to sit back and watch it all from his bed in this room, all that wet-air-ness and flashing light would wake the human sleeping across the room from him up. And then Stanley would be awake. ...And then Stanley would probably want to _talk about things_ again -- _agreement_ -related things -- which would be completely distracting in a way Bill wouldn’t and didn’t want just then, because it would get in the way of what Bill wanted!

And Bill wanted to experience all that weather going on outside. _Without_ interruption by Stanley.

So if Bill wanted to actually _do_ what he wanted to do, then in order to make this work...

He shoved the blanket off of him, shoved himself onto his feet--

\--and nearly tripped and fell as he shoved his feet forward, almost forgot how he was supposed to balance in this stupid, human-ish body. He held his breath for a few long moments, feeling dizzy inside his head as he did so.

Stanley didn’t even shift in his bed this time.

Bill quietly huffed out a breath and took a moment to try and regain his mental bearings and physical body-balance.

His head was a mess.

He recognized this fact, noted it as true, and moved on from it.

Then he swayed his way forward, away from his bed. He made his way past Stanley, who apparently _remained asleep_ even as Bill creaked his way across the floor of the bedroom _right next to him_ , and… really, Bill wasn’t surprised at all that Stanley had lied about how easily he’d wake up, if something happened in the room. That Stanley had lied when he’d said that he’d wake up to just about anything.

That had been the reason Stanley had given for wanting Bill to sleep in the same room as he was: that if anything happened, like Ford trying to break in, that Stanley would wake up _right away_ and… it really was one of the most stupid and out and out _thinnest_ of excuses Bill had ever heard for someone wanting to keep an eye on him -- _really, had Stanley even been **trying** to make it sound realistic?!_ \-- and--!!

Bill ran a hand down his face and grimaced. He let the building anger peak out, plateau, and then pass. Because he knew very well that there was a difference between something being right and being true. Stanley could very much have _thought_ that he was right when he’d told Bill what he had, but... humans didn’t usually mean _ANYTHING_ when they said ‘anything’, not _really_ \-- their imaginations were to small to cover every possible circumstance like Bill could, if he tried. And Stanley was only human, and an old one at that. Any human Stanley’s age would have a hard time waking up at this hour, even with the amount of noise Bill had been making, even with the noisy rainstorm going on outside the house’s walls, and Bill knew this. -- _Well-nigh impossible_ was more likely as things currently stood, Bill figured, given how late they’d both stayed up talking the night before.

...which was yet _another_ thing that Bill didn’t want to think about just then -- and was trying to put off just a little longer by leaving the room to go experience the weather he wanted to experience from _someplace else_ \-- what all they’d talked about. Bill had been sick to death by boredom of it all, long before they’d been even close to done.

Bill glanced back at Stanley tiredly, then looked away again, head feeling heavy.

Truth be told, they weren’t _yet_ done rehashing things out. Really, all they’d actually accomplished thus far, late that afternoon and well into the evening, was to rehash and reaffirm the most basic of basics, call a time-out for sleep, and hopefully have a better time of it with ‘more rational’ well-rested heads whenever they woke up again, ready to continue on in the morning.

\--‘Well-rested’, ha. Bill knew he wasn’t going to get back to sleep easily after what he’d been remembering-while-asleep, though. If he could get back to sleep at all. Not that evening. Not feeling the way he did just then.

Frustrated. Angry. Dizzy and sick. Irritated, and tired, and too cold by far. Impatient, and fed up with anything and everything, and everything else in-between.

Bill took in a deep breath and tried to let it out slowly.

And then Bill reminded himself that Stanley hadn’t lied to him when he said he’d wake up to just about anything if something happened in the room. Stanley had thought that would be the case, under normal circumstances, for whatever Stanley considered to be normal circumstances.

It wasn’t Stanley’s fault that he hadn’t woken up to Bill’s screaming, at Bill having replayed a not-so-very-pleasant memory in his mind while he’d been asleep in his slowly-regenerating Dreamscape.

Why would Stanley wake up to that? To Stanley, it was probably music to his ears, the sort of thing that would put a smile on his face in his sleep. Bill wouldn’t be at all surprised if Stanley actually found the sound pleasant, replaying it in his own mind from time to time, recalling it from his memories of when he’d first killed Bill inside his mind.

...Not that Bill particularly felt like walking over to Stanley’s bed, to lean over him and look at him, to check and see if that was truly the case.

He could do without knowing that, thank you.

What he could do _with_ knowing was under what circumstances Stanley would break their agreement, and break all this ‘kid stuff’.

Bill had already hit and passed the point of obsession in needing Stanley to just _admit it already_. He was _beyond_ sick and tired of Stanley's antics on the subject. He was _not_ a seventeen-year-old kid, he was _not_ a human being, and he was _tired_ of waiting for Stanley to realize that Bill was exactly who he said he was -- the triangle demon who had messed with his family during Weirdmageddon. Bill was _tired_ of waiting for Stanley to change his mind. To go from treating him like ‘a kid’ and trying to give him all these things, to feeling betrayed and trying to kill him again instead. Just like Stanford had.

Bill was just tired.

But Bill still hadn’t found a way to convince Stanley yet and get it all over with, and Bill wasn’t able to get to sleep again just then because of that stupid memory-replay in the inconveniently-timed partial-reformation of his Dreamscape.

Not that Bill was complaining, exactly, just then, but he’d much rather hit the status quo sooner rather than later. --And not being able to sleep so well or so much due to a lack of safe surroundings wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, right? He’d spent almost all of his previous lifetime like that, anyway. It had kept Bill sharp, kept him on his toes. Who needed that much sleep in a soft warm bed, anyway? He wasn’t some dumb Time Baby or something!

Besides, now that he was awake and there was actual _weather_ going on outside, well, how could he just climb back in bed to fall asleep and _miss out_ out something like that!! And… He needed tea, or something. --Yes, something **warm** to drink. He’d kicked off the covers at some point again -- unsurprising, all that surrounding _pressure_ didn’t exactly feel _comfortable_ to him, being used to floating in the Mindscape -- despite the fact that they did help to make him feel slightly more comfortable in a different way by trapping what little heat his human-ish body radiated, to help him feel a little warmer. Right now, his body’s core temperature felt far too cool to raise itself back to what it presumably needed to be, entirely all on its own, without outside assistance.

...Not easily, anyway, and Bill had learned the hard way that ‘without outside assistance’ generally meant shivering under three patchwork quilt blankets for at least an hour or two in bed. Bill wasn’t about to put himself through _that_ again if he didn’t have to. So. _Tea._

Not that the tea selection here was all that great. --He wanted his Cosmic Tea, curse the Axolotl! He wanted to be able to snap his fingers, and have a cup and saucer appear in front of him, with a full kettle of the stuff hovering nearby to serve him, to top off his cup the very _moment_ he wanted more.

He wanted to be able to trap Stanley in sleep with a thought, suppress his mind under, so he could wave open the curtains and window -- _no_ , wave open the _entire wall!_ even _better!_ \-- and just sit back and relax within a cocoon of covers, his hands curled around a gloriously-warm cup of his favorite steaming beverage as he looked out at the _forest_ and the _sky_ and all that **weather** in-between, sipping his tea while feeling… just, _feeling_. Just… being, and feeling, and _experiencing_...

But there was a mystical barrier surrounding the house on all sides, and that needed to stay intact. Bill needed that intact, and Stanley agreed with him on this. So Bill wouldn’t.

...Didn’t mean he couldn’t _want_ it, though.

Bill let out a tired sigh as he looked down at the doorknob in front of him, then put a hand out onto it and turned it. The door creaked as he knew it would, as he dragged it towards him and pulled it open.

He lifted his gaze up from it, and…

...looked straight into someone’s chest.

He blinked, and then tilted his head back to stare blankly upwards at the face of the person in front of him.

Bill had a moment to wonder if he was still asleep, because of the fuzziness of the human-shaped outline he was seeing. Because he’d never actually tried to see in the dark before, not in his current body. And because he wasn’t used to doing so, he didn’t really know how to properly forcibly-apply all the usual bio-ticks that unmodified humans used for handling this troublesome little problem just yet.

So with the human nightmare-like lack of visibility in the darkened room and hallway, it left Bill a little uncertain as to who, exactly, was there…

...up until lightning flashed from the window behind him, bright enough through even the heavy curtains to throw dark shadows across Stanford Pines’ stone-faced expression, bringing it into black-and-dark-grey relief for him for just a moment.

Then the light level dropped abruptly and thunder crashed shortly thereafter.

‘ _Ah_ ,’ thought Bill.

\---


End file.
